The Annette Era

By M. J. Moore

April 9, 2013

Annette Funicello’s death on Monday at age 70 occurred the day after the premiere of Season 6 of “Mad Men,” a show with overlapping plots that have evolved in chronological order, beginning with the year 1960 — the same year Funicello segued from “The Mickey Mouse Club” (which aired between 1955-59) to her career as a singer and performer in a passel of musicals produced in Hollywood before the British Invasion transformed youth culture.

“Mad Men”’s narrative trek through the years now compels its protagonists to face the increasingly surreal and riotous mayhem of America’s social and political panorama in the late 1960s: the shift from “We Shall Overcome” to “Black Power”; our plunge into Vietnam’s quagmire; the generation gap; the assassinations in 1968 of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy; plus, of course, the incipient women’s movement.

All that, set against a soundtrack ruled by the Doors, the Rolling Stones, and the “White Album” incarnation of the Beatles, whose aural evolution defined the epoch.

According to one school of thought, the “real 1960s” did not unfold until well after JFK’s demise, and definitely after the onset of the Beatles’ psychedelic phase in 1966 (“Strawberry Fields Forever” in lieu of “She Loves You”), and eons after the earlier half of the decade had been sweetly personified by Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon in a slew of beach movies, replete with “Twist”-era AM-radio rock ’n’ roll.

Ironically, it was that earlier part of the 1960s — the Annette Era, so to speak — that first created “Mad Men”’s buzz.

The meticulous recreation of the fashions, manners and mores of 1960-63 reminded (or taught) viewers how drastically different the first part of the decade was, compared to 1967-69.

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Annette Funicello during her days at The Mickey Mouse Club, 1955-1959.CreditDisney/European Pressphoto Agency

A shorthand way to highlight this is to note that Elvis Presley’s film “Blue Hawaii” (in no way dissimilar to Annette’s beach movies) was a big hit in 1961 (one of that year’s top 10 at the box office and Presley’s most successful album up to then); whereas in 1969, the smash-hit movie of the moment was the drug-fueled, acid-tinged “Easy Rider,” which went into wide release during the same season as a festival called Woodstock.

Ever since, the two halves of the 1960s have collided in the public’s mind. The first half now seems like a legendary tale unto itself; the latter half plays out like Greek tragedy. Yet for most Americans old enough to remember anything of those times, the whole period is retained in the memory as a cavalcade of TV images, moments of media-accentuated highs and lows, a dizzying kaleidoscope of contrasting profiles and endless arguments that continue today.

Was Vietnam noble or a war crime? Was the Sexual Revolution a disaster or not? Were the Beatles more appealing in matching suits or as hippie artistes? And so on. The issues are still argued, in new permutations. As for the images, they exist in a realm that transcends argument.

As fate would have it, the images of Annette Funicello (the former “Mouseketeer,” the bouffant-styled beach goddess, the good girl, the nice girl, the girl next door) are as much a part of the 1960s as “The Ballad of John and Yoko” or Janis Joplin at Monterey Pop. Annette’s audience was equally enraptured. Just quieter.

Last Sunday night, as Don Draper & Co. brought “Mad Men” (and its increasingly powerful women) into the years that are disproportionately cited to represent the 1960s (in other words, the 1967-68 period), anyone channel-surfing was likely to see and hear Annette Funicello. On one network, one of her beach movies with Frankie Avalon was playing — a fitting counterpoint to the dark days “Mad Men” now explores.

“Beach Party” in the early 1960s was as lovely a fantasy as “California Dreamin”’ in the second half of the decade. And Annette’s profile still defines the first half of that ever-debatable decade as much as Jackie’s pillbox hat.